Richard Rogers

Lord Richard Rogers was born on July 23, 1933, in Florence. His family came from Trieste, a beautifully mixed family from the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His older cousin was Ernesto N. Rogers, a long-time member of CIAM, editor of the magazine Casabella, and a leading figure of the architectural group BBPR, which realized Torre Velasca in Milan. His mother, whose last name was Gairinger, was of Czech descent. His parents moved to England in 1939.
After graduating from the Architectural Association in London, where his teachers included Peter D. Smithson, and the Yale University School of Architecture in New Haven, where he studied under Paul Rudolph, Serge Chermayeff, and Vincent Scully, and after gaining experience with SOM, he opened a joint office with Norman Foster from 1963 to 1966. In this partnership, they built their first project, the Reliance Controls Factory in Swindon (1966-67), an innovative architecture in the spirit of the early 'high-tech movement', for which they received the Financial Times award.
At the same time, in the community of these architects, along with Ron Herron, Peter Cook, and others, a magazine and group known as Archigram emerged, defining the ideological orientation of the 1960s generation. In this circle, visionary projects for walking cities and manifestos of the high-tech movement in architecture were created, which also served as inspiration for young architects from SIAL, Karl Hubáček's group in Liberec.
In 1971, together with Italian architect Renzo Piano, he entered an international competition for the Centre Pompidou, and their design was awarded the first prize. The building located in the historic part of Paris on Plateau Beaubourg, completed in 1977, was the first of a series of so-called 'Grand projects' that French presidents Pompidou and Mitterrand influenced the current form of the metropolis on the Seine and also marked the culmination of the high-tech movement. At the end of the 1970s, he followed up with the design of the Lloyd's insurance building in London's City, where Rogers advocated for modern architecture in the conservative area of Cornhill. His architecture with precise detailing in the symbiosis of glass and metal offers completely flexible floor plans, and what is usually hidden inside—communication systems, installations, and media technology—is presented outside. This creates a dynamic, even expressive character of these grand kinetic architectural works. Thus, Rogers began to differentiate himself more from his first partner Norman Foster, while Foster moved towards a laconic expression and formal purism, Rogers aimed for expressiveness and a technocratic romanticism. In the second half of the 1980s, he realized his own architectural office in the Hammersmith district on the banks of the Thames as a group of glass cubes reflecting the tradition of rationalist interwar architecture.
In the first half of the 1990s, he completed the Chanel 4 BBC near Victoria Station with a strongly expressionist character in the entrance space both outdoors and indoors.
In October 1990, he was the first prominent British architect to come to Prague to present his work and launch a series of British architects' presentations organized by the British Council.
After the completion of the European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg, inaugurated in 1995 by President Václav Havel, he also recently completed the court building in Bordeaux.
Currently, his work culminates with the Millenium Dome project in Greenwich, Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, the parliamentary building in Wales, and just recently winning the competition for the courthouse in Antwerp.
In 1991, Richard Rogers was elevated to the nobility by Queen Elizabeth II, and in 1996 he was appointed a lord with the right to use the name Lord Rogers of Riverside. This also made him a member of the House of Lords in the British Parliament.
In many of his works with elegant detailing of metal and glass constructions, Rogers also reflects the legacy of the Czech avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, of which he is an admirer. His close collaborators included Czech architects Jan Kaplický and Eva Jiřičná.
Richard Rogers belongs alongside Norman Foster to the most significant British architects who have also had a decisive impact on global developments and have built upon the great tradition of Victorian constructions of the 19th century.

Vladimír Šlapeta (introduction to the lecture on the occasion of awarding the honorary doctorate from ČVUT)